The man had no family, no lover, no friends. He lived behind an old abandoned auto repair store in a shelter made of branches from the forest nearby. He didn’t remember when or how he got there. He didn’t anything about his previous life, if he had one. But he knew the forest. It was always familiar to him and he could navigate it almost flawlessly, or at least for as long as he could remember, If that was worth anything. That’s why he was startled when he encountered an unfamiliar open area on his way to collect some resources to repair his shelter. The sun shone brightly down through the large opening in the trees, almost as if it were amplified by a giant magnifying glass. The man stood there a while as the warmth of the sun began to fill the dismal void inside. He never felt like his existence mattered to the world around him, and the truth is that it didn’t. Everything would continue as normal if he existed or not, and he knew that for sure. Suddenly a shimmer of light caught his eye. The man shifted his gaze away from the sky and spotted shards of broken glass in the center of the opening. For a brief moment the man thought about why the glass was there. Could it be that there was another person wandering the woods? Could a long lost family member have submitted a missing persons report? Maybe he really was loved, so much so that someone had set out to find him. No. The man knew that all this was was all wishfull thinking. He felt the emptiness inside return to him so strongly that he collapsed on to the ground, and he layed there for someone or something to take him, until he fell asleep.

When he woke up the glass was still in the center of the opening. The sun had gone down by then and it was pitch black, yet the glass still had the same shimmer as before. This puzzled the man. He stood up slowly and began to approach the glass, but as he got closer, the less it looked like glass. The man was now standing in front of a static hologram. It was just as flat as the field it was in. Was this all just a dream? The man struck himself in the face as hard as he could, enjoying the feeling a little, but he didnt wake up. The strike he had delivered to himself was enough to knock him off balance, and he toppled over, onto the hologram. The man braced himself and closed his eyes, but he didnt feel the hologram, or the grass below him. His eyes remained closed, but he noticed a stench of mildew and a faint, hum echoed in his ears. He opened his eyes to a familiar yellow wallpaper and dirty, damp carpet floors. “This is where I belong”, the man muttered to himself.